AUSTIN - A series of good deeds turns into heartbreak for a dog owner.

Christine Bockin is holding out hope that she'll get her one-year-old black lab Mila back after another family adopted her.

Bockin has hung up flyers, typed out notes, and shed a ton of tears since her dog wandered away from home without her collar.

A Good Samaritan brought the one-year-old black lab from Harker Heights to the"no-kill" Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter in Georgetown.

After a 72-hour waiting period, Mila went to the Austin Humane Society.

Bockin finally tracked her down, but instead of celebration came some agonizing news.

"She had been adopted the day before, in the afternoon," she said. "I had just missed my chance and was less than 24 hours away from getting my dog back."

A few days after she sat down for this interview, KVUE's Tina Shively ran into her while doing an interview at the Austin Humane Society.

Bockin did not want to talk on-camera after getting perhaps the worst news of all; the new family decided they wouldn't send Mila back to her old home.

"They said no, they were not interested," said Erica Miller, Director of Communications for the Austin Humane Society. "And they were very adamant that we stopped contacting them at this point."

The adoptive family has not been identified by the Humane society.

Miller says dog owners should take advantage of helpful technology like

microchips,

whose

benefits can

go a long

way.

Shelter Manager Sarah Hammel said, "The chip itself is the size of a grain of rice and it stays in there for life." Demonstrating how to use the scanner, she added, "So you go over like this and it beeps and the number comes right up on the screen."

Microchips are inexpensive, even free at some Austin area shelters.

Bockin says she had Mila since she was weaned from her mother, and was planning on getting Mila chipped and spayed in the near future.

She adds she doesn't blame the Good Samaritan or the new family, she just wants Mila to come home.

An Austin civil attorney that's not involved with the case said Bockin does have grounds to file a lawsuit that would go before the Justice of the Peace.